Iraqi commander: forces fully retake Islamic State-held Hawija
Iraqi army forces in Tal Afar.
Hawija (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi joint forces on Thursday took over the town of Hawija, an Islamic State militants’ bastion in southwestern Kirkuk, after nearly two weeks of offensives.
Joint Operations Command’s top general, Abdul-Amir Yarallah, said army, Federal Police, Rapid Response Forces and the Popular Mobilization forces have totally taken over Hawija, and continue advancing to clear the town from militants.
Yarallah said Wednesday that joint troops invaded the town’s center after managing to seize back 98 villages and leaving 196 militants dead.
The decisive onslaught came as part of a second stage of operations launched last Friday to seize the town held by Islamic State militants since 2014. The first phase of operations launched on September 24th, and managed to retake eastern Shirqat, an Islamic State haven in neighboring Salahuddin province.
The recapture of Hawija means that only western Anbar’s towns of Rawa and Qaim remain under the militant’s control. Iraqi troops recaptured the town of Annah, a third IS holdout neighboring those two towns, late September.
The United Nations has recently voiced fears for the fate of over 70.000 civilians trapped inside the enclave.
A wide-scale campaign launched with the backing of a U.S.-led coalition in 2016 to recapture areas occupied by IS since 2014, when the militants declared a self-styled “caliphate” rule in Iraq and neighboring Syria based in Iraq’s Mosul.
Iraqi government, coalition and paramilitary forces recaptured Mosul, the group’s former capital, and the neighboring town of Tal Afar early July and late August.